“Happiness is a rare commodity. There’s a lot of fuel for the claim that unhappiness is caused by some software, when in fact the roots of unhappiness are way deeper than that.” — Keith Teare
If it’s not warfare in Iran, then it’s lawfare in California. Out here in Silicon Valley, it’s been a week dominated by two trials of big tech. First, Meta and YouTube were found liable for designing products that addict children. While the young female social media victims hugged outside the Los Angeles courthouse, the Wall Street Journal dismissed it as a Big Tech shakedown. Then, up the road in San Francisco, a federal judge granted Anthropic an emergency reprieve from the Pentagon’s unprecedented designation of the company as a supply chain risk.
For That Was the Week publisher Keith Teare, the social media trial was fighting the last war, while the Anthropic vs US Government trial is about the future of war. Anthropic took the bait, Keith says. Governments, he believes, should get to decide how to use the products they buy from Silicon Valley. Anthropic wanted to sell to the government but dictate how their technology gets used in battle. The Istanbul-based Soli Özel warned us earlier this week that events in the Middle East are going to get much bloodier. But I wonder if warfare in Iran and lawfare in California are separate fronts in the same battle over tomorrow.
Takeaways
• The Social Media Trial Is Fighting the Last War. $6 million fine. Culturally seismic. But the root cause is alienation, not algorithms.
• Anthropic Took the Bait. Governments decide how to use weapons. Anthropic wanted to sell but dictate usage. Juvenile.
• Would You Buy a Used Car from Sam Altman? Probably not. But OpenAI killed Sora, shelved porn mode, and recommitted. Maturity, not failure.
• AI’s Third Era: Autonomous Agents. Claude’s Dispatch, connectors, calendar. Acting when you’re not present. The product is excellent.
• Intelligence Is Getting Cheaper. Fear wrapped up as principle. The market is repricing the future. Time to grow up.
About the Guest
Keith Teare publishes That Was The Week. He is co-founder of SignalRank and a regular Saturday guest on Keen On America.
References
That Was The Week: https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: two big trials in California
00:01:47 The Meta/YouTube verdict: $6 million and a cultural earthquake
00:03:11 Is every product designed to be addictive?
00:05:24 The roots of addiction: alienation, not algorithms
00:08:23 Happiness is a rare commodity
00:09:51 Anthropic’s emergency reprieve: the most important event of the week
00:11:16 Free speech or weapons control? Anthropic took the bait
00:13:00 The AI documentary: How I Became an Apocalyptomist
00:15:04 The decade-long Altman-Amodei feud
00:16:34 Why are they all such children? Demis Hassabis as the adult
00:18:50 OpenAI kills Sora and shelves porn mode: maturity or retreat?
00:23:11 Claude’s new era: Dispatch, connectors, autonomous agents
00:25:07 The social media trial is fighting yesterday’s war
00:26:22 Prediction markets: the casino eating the world
00:28:53 Intelligence is getting cheaper. Fear wrapped up as principle.